Thursday, 24 October 2013

7 Goswami temples of Vrindavan

1. Radha Madana Mohana Temple – Sanatana Goswami discovered the deity of Madana Mohana and this was the first temple to be built in Vrindavan. The original deity of Madana-mohana was taken to Karauli for protection during the Muslim attacks led by Emperor Aurangzeb in 1670.




2. Radha Damodara – The original deity was carved by Rupa Gosvami and gifted to disciple, Jiva Gosvami, who built this temple.


3. Radha Syamasundara – This is one of the lesser known but very important temples as the deity was manifested from Srimati Radharani’s heart and given to Syamananda to worship.




4. Radha Ramana – “Radha Ramana” means “one who gives pleasure to Radha”, andRadha Ramana is one of the few original deities still left in Vrindavan. Radha Ramana is said to be self-manifested from one of the Goswami’s saligram silas in 1542.



5. Radha Govinda – This temple was built by Maharaja Man Singh and the original Govindaji was reinstalled in Jaipur during the Muslim attacks.



6. Radha Gokulananda – This temple has a Govardhana shila gifted by Lord Chaitanya to Raghunath Dasa Gosvami and is believed to contain the thumbprint of Lord Chaitanya. The temple also has Radha-Vinoda deities of Lokanatha 
Gosvami, Vijaya Govinda of Baladeva Vidyabhusana and Viswanath Chakravarti’s Radha-Gokulananda deities.



7. Radha Gopinatha – Gopinatha was first installed 5,000 years ago by Vajranaba, Lord Krishna’s grandson, and rediscovered at Vamsi-vata by Paramananda Goswami.
RadhaGopinath in Vrindavan

RadhaGopinath in Jaipur (original)


Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Collection of Folk stories from Pitt U

                 Folk stories are simple yet a great moral conveying tools for all classes of men. It contains a subtle message to be imbibed for an ethical upbringing of human being. Often animals plays lead roles in these stories and their conversations with human beings and other species brings a completely different experience to the reader. This style is very natural and in the sense you don't find much similarities often in the contemporary literature.

First in this domain known to exist and spread across the world in different languages is - Panchatantra by Vishnu Sharma from India. This is the most celebrated epic ..

Here is the electronic collection of some of the stories by a professor D.L.Ashliman from Univ of Pittsburg.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html